River Conditions: 4/29/16

Water Clarity: Everything is pretty much clear aside from the Winooski

Water Temperatures:  Mid-Upper 40’s

Hatches: Brown/black Stoneflies, Possible Hendricksons

Suggested Patterns:  RL Stoneflies, Two Tone Stones, Simple Stones, Smethurts Twenty Bomb, Copper Johns, Pheasant Tails, Black Montana Prince Nymphs, Olive and Natural Hare’s Ears, Bob’s Softy, Wooly Buggers, Muddler Minnows, Drunk Dads, Sparkle Minnows.

The fishing has remained fairly consistent for us over the past few days. We’ve been getting fish, not a ton but if you put some effort in you’ll most likely be rewarded. We’ve been getting fish on nymphs for the most part, generally in the slower moving water. We’ve seen some good black stonefly hatches and had reports of some Hendricksons although we haven’t seen any fish feeding on top yet. The bass fishing has really turned on for us and we’ve been hitting lots of fish in water depths between 3 and 8ft with our flies in the top 3 feet. The takes aren’t very aggressive, usually all of a sudden we just feel weight on the end of our lines and set the hook. They aren’t fighting too aggressively yet either but a few more degrees will turn that right around. Yesterday I got out in the morning for trout and was able to find one hole with a 22 plus inch brown in it and a few smaller fish. I managed to miss the brown on my third drift fishing with a black stonefly pattern. He didn’t seem to spook and just continued feeding so I hung around for a bit and a little while later I spotted another good sized fish and on my second drift with a olive soft hackle jig fly I got that fish to eat. That one was a rainbow around 17-18″ and after hooking him, the big brown definitely got spooked and disappeared. I fished a couple more holes and didn’t see any other fish. The water temp was right around 45 degrees. Once we see the water warm up a bit more things should really turn on. As far as the bigger rivers go, right now the Winooski is pretty dirty and it’s going to take a bit for it to clear up. Once we get some rain on Sunday it may even take longer to clear up. The Lamoille is in good shape right now and is worth a shot. Other than that, the smaller streams around will be fishing the best, with low water conditions, be sure to work your way up stream and keep your eyes peeled for fish. Sometimes you’ll see scary big fish in smaller streams this time of the year that swam up from bigger rivers to feed and escape the high flows that often occur in the bigger rivers.

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